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Ah.. I need to have finished the game( http://xcom.wikia.com/wiki/Second_Wave ) this is a problem. I get bored by the grind and teleporting in opponents and identikit soldiers, something I hope Enemy Within will resolve.

Not Created Equally and Hidden Potential are a must and you don't need to beat the game to select them.

Not to carry on the ME3 wagon (...) but my narrative issues stretched way beyond the ending. Deus Ex Machina: The Game! Need a way to win an impossible war? HERE'S A SUPER WEAPON. But don't worry, we'll try to make it subtle by not knowing what it actually does. That's okay, isn't it? Not explaining something because you're not supposed to know? I'm glad you agree! Now go around and resolve these conflicts that couldn't at all wait until after we'd put aside our, relatively speaking, minor differences and NOT BECOME EXTINCT. It's as if everyone in that universe come the third game was fighting over who had control of The Idiot Ball. UCH.

And on the subject of AI, I seem to be encountering difficulties I never encountered previously in Shogun 2: Total War. Now in older TW games, when the armies got big you just ended up mushing them together in one big splurge of "MAKE THE ENEMY DIE AND YOU NOT!" which generally worked. I'm expecting a little more finesse now, so when I beautifully craft my vast army into a capable machine of organisation and death dealing, I sort of expect the game to keep track of my very simple commands: 1. Stay in formation. 2. Don't leave formation.

Now you, dear reader, might say "But aren't they the same?" Yes! Indeed, they are! Except Shogun 2 has a desire that the formation you've created is more a loose interpretation of what it was doing exactly 10 seconds previously. I get it, some units have different movement speed, but is it that hard to realise that you've been grouped up with other units in a very specific, very sensible manner? Well, apparently. A massive battle with almost 2500 men on each side consisted of 15 minutes shuffling into position. By the time I said fuck it and just clicked all my melee units, pointed at one of the enemy units and just had done, I was beginning to laugh at the directions that some were taking, as well as the directions some had to take because without me noticing they'd waddled into the middle of nowhere.

And I certainly won't be forgetting my archers' tactical retreat of splitting from their nice formation line and dividing into two directions. Allow me to paint the scene crudely:

Enemy: ............\/........

Archers: .....<<.......>>

HOW?! WHY?! I don't know. Now you're going to ask "Well why don't you just bloody auto-resolve it at this point?" Again, a superb question, one that I have pondered many times. The answer is that this is the result of me auto-resolving large battles that should've easily gone in my favour, but I'd end up losing most of my army in what the game would decree a "Decisive victory" simply because the enemy had been almost wiped out. I was...not entirely happy with that result. I took control manually and the battle out-come was vastly different, highlighting just how superior my force was, barely losing 1/6 of what the AI did, whilst simultaneously taking out more of the enemy.

I appreciate auto-resolve is supposed to be the compromise between 20-30 minutes of precision and a quick resolve, but I also don't expect the difference within that to be almost an entire army's difference! And if it's all a numbers game, how the hell did the game think I didn't deserve to absolutely slaughter them so comprehensibly considering I had every advantage going in?

And on top of all this, I'm at that mid-game point where the enemy only has vast armies that seem to come out of nowhere and only seem to be used against you, despite you looking at the map and clearly identifying much more valid threats that are closer to home. Urgh. I really would like to win a campaign, even a short one, but it's frustrating that I seem to be approaching these mechanical issues. It just makes the whole thing frustrating because there's a great degree of depth there to explore, but you can become a psychic playing these games knowing when stuff is going to happen that you have to react to and it never feels like you have enough time to execute anything because there's an army knocking at your door. I won't at all proclaim I'm something special at the game, but it gets tiring seeing the same patterns.

EDIT: Oh, and while I'm at it, played some Hawken earlier. After being completely whipped by players who had played for longer and, not because of skill, but because they had the experience points to buy parts that make their mechs better with no repercussions, it was a reminder that I bloody miss arena shooters where you had everything available to you at the start that you needed. I might re-install UT04. I mean jeez, it's been 10 years and there hasn't really been anything since that's in the same hemisphere of quality and intent. What the hell, gaming industry? What the hell.

RE: ME3: Maybe resolution is a better word to use than ending. Honestly, I stand by what I said a few pages earlier: Bioware can't write a decent plot for shit, and the monomyth will only take you so far.

And the Mako was such a piece of shit. You live in a world of spaceships and the best you can come up with is that? Ever heard of a fucking helicopter?

I don't think helicopters work in vacuum. May be wrong though. I thought Mako was alright.

Resident Evil 4

First time playing it. Mostly alright game but terrible controls and it's not challenging at all which is kind of bad for a survival horror. It's not even really a survival horror game, ammo is everywhere( though I can't buy it?) and enemies are not very dangerous. I guess it was the beginning of RE franchise turning into what it is today.

Now that I have some responsibilities out of the way, I got back to Dark Souls 2.

Very much enjoying it. It has some serious flaws, but I am loving it. I'll make a "final" opinion probably next weekend, but it is favorable. Also, it looks gorgeous and most of those screenshots were staged to make it look worse. For one thing, the dragons ARE at that bridge if you look for more than a second.

Also, all of my ranting against Dragon Age 2 convinced me to play Dragon Age 2 again. Yeah, I don't get it either :p. Bought the Legacy DLC, skipped the Felicia Day DLC since apparently it is broken as hell and tends to corrupt saves.

Used a save generator to build a DA:O save since I lost my old one (that was kind of broken anyway because of Bioware not planning for it) and rolling a Rogue

Also, I have never got all the Mako hate. I am a HORRIBLE driver and I regularly tried to go straight up 90 degree inclines and I never had a problem with it. And it led to the climax of ME1 which is arguably better than the climax of the whole series.

Steam: Gundato
PSN: Gundato
If you want me on either service, I suggest PMing me here first to let me know who you are.

I agree. It grows old if you chase every map marker on every side planet, but then again, so does on-foot shooting. The Mako sections were a nice breather, and they also gave the game some ​degree of scale.

In my current game, one of the AI's is a special forces commander (at diff 8). The result is a patrol of 25,000 roaming ships which move to defend any AI system that's attacked. I think it may actually be the most horrifying thing I've ever seen in this game.

Since I couldn't sleep this morning, I spent a couple of hours starting and finishing Blackwell Convergence. Again, such a charming game, like the rest of the series. On to Deception next few days and then wait for the final game to be released.

Wow, the 'skill roulette', 'not created equal' and the 'something angles' settings really revolutionised XCOM. Position matters more than the size of the shield on the cover and every person is a beautiful collection of strengths and flaws.

I just realised that 2K made the Necromunda game and nobody noticed. If only they'd made a persistent multiplayer campaign.

You like Something Angles, then? I was considering doing a playthrough with properly individual troops, and I was never sure if that one was a good idea.

This week I've been having the most brutally nasty cold I've ever had. Yuck. Still, Diablo 3: Roster of Stools has been perfect for being sick. Satisfying and involving without having to think too much. I"m delighted with how D3 has been fixed. It was always a pretty good game, and now it's a great one.

In other gaming news: Luftrausers: wheeeee! Ace Patrol is great for running in a window while my 2 year old sits on my lap and watches videos of trains.

You mean Aiming Angles? I use it all the time. It makes early game even more deadly on classic. Especially when thin men arrive. After that though it gets easier and easier like any XCOM:EW playthrough.

I'm getting tired of RE4. It's never even slightly scary, more like unsettling sometimes but not too much, it's kind of old too and that doesn't help. I enjoyed it's obvious clones like Dead Space much more. Even the second Dead Space. And by the way, RE4 setting often looks exactly like some stages of Dark Souls. Even some enemies and bosses look similar. Not sure what to thinbk of it.

Just got tothe Deus Ex: HR equivalent of Hong Kong; the level design is gorgeous, and the accents aren't as absurdly terrible this time, which is good enough for me. I've also upgraded my arms to the point where I can pick up and throw refrigerators and vending machines, which I find oddly hilarious.

And yes, I like it. It gets rid of missing point blanc shots around cover. I still wish I could throw up cyber barbed wire or something like that, but whatever. The fact is with 'something angles' gun fights can get into police academy shootouts from heavy cover to heavy cover, but that's okay because you are playing it wrong. It instead throws influence from RNG to tactics, and abilities. It also boosts grenades and the ability to ignore over watch or throw out suppression.

People not being identikit clones is easier to praise, they matter, you grieve them, you want meld or to save a felled ally, but the soldier is too precious it creates compromise, the mother of strategy.

Edit: I need to add, Enemy Within is the best expansion pack for years. It fixed the base game and poured in interesting content. Non of the lazy 2 maps, 3 guns and 4 hats nonsense here.

Finished my NG of Dark Souls 2 (sort of, it uses the Borderlands approach of letting you dick around before manually starting the NG+), and overall I like it a lot.

In a lot of ways, it is the best Souls game yet. The weapons have a lot more variety to them and magic isn't the be-all end-all of PvE it used to be. Similarly, I really loved exploring the world and I think doing a hybrid approach was the smart thing to do: It has the Demon Souls "Go to the far ends of the world to find widgets" going for it, but it is still one giant and semi-connected work, like Dark Souls.

Boss wise, there were quite a few good fights but far too many of them were "boring humans" as it were. Honestly, if I did the actual headcount it is probably the same number of "fun" and "weird" bosses as Dark1, but with a LOT more human-ish bosses in between. Because it basically uses the Demon Souls style "A boss for absolutely every area, sometimes two" approach, and there are a LOT of areas. I think I have three rows worth of boss souls, and EVERY boss drops a boss soul now (except one, but he is special).

Similarly, the puzzle boss this time is completely reasonable and not at all annoying.

Furthermore, there is a new boss mechanic that I am sure a lot of people are going to HATE. Pretty generic, but I'll block it anyway: Horde bosses. Basically you fight massive waves of mooks in place of a single boss. So Capra cranked up to 11.

In terms of story, I found it both lacking and amazing. The bad: It is the most half-assed and shitty narrative in a Souls game to date. I honestly STILL don't really know why my PC was doing anything, especially as nobody really told me what to do outside of "Go kill shit, but we won't tell you what shit". I pieced it together because I played the other games, but I would be very surprised if any newbies know what is going on. It isn't "Why are they asking me to do this?" like Dark1 but more "Uhm, why am I doing what this person said? And does anyone remember what that person even said to begin with?"

Also, I STILL don't know what was going on at a few points, so I look forward to EpicNameBro's videos on the subject (he may be an obnoxious douche, but the man is good at piecing together the lore of a Souls game and making it very clear which parts are fact and which are speculation. He actually predicted the contents of the Artorias DLC eerily well. I STRONGLY recommend watching his lore videos and ignoring any of his gameplay ones). And at some point I'll go through and read all the Boss Soul descriptions for a bit more info, as well as the strategy guide I bought (never used while playing, but it makes for a great coffee table book and has a lot of art and even some lore). I was reading the Boss souls as I played, but near the end I was fighting bosses so rapidly that I lost track.

That being said, I absolutely LOVED many aspects of the story. I won't spoil anything, but let's just say that people who played Dark (and to a lesser extent, Demon) Souls are going to LOVE figuring out how things are connected.

Of course, the game is not without flaws. It seems like melee, archery, and magic (all the flavors of magic) were nerfed/buffed to be approximately equal. For the most part, my bow was doing comparable damage to my sword, and people I summoned had spells doing a similar amount of damage. In a lot of ways, that is good: It avoids an optimal (PvE) build. On the other hand, it makes archery VERY powerful as arrows still seem to have some aim assist while spells miss left and right. And one of the things justifying magic was that it left you vulnerable. You had to find an opportunity to cast and hope it hit before you got blasted. Now, you still have to find that opening, but you'll probably miss anyway. And even if you hit, there is a good chance you might have been better off smacking them.
Of course, that is not to say that magic is useless. There are more than a few bosses who can be wiped out with one or two castings of an area of effect spell.

I would suggest rolling a melee+pyromancy build on your first game (I did pure melee with a bow and only had a few problems), but I plan to play through as a caster with a halberd eventually.

Also, the level design is a LOT dickier now. One area in particular (Shrine of Amana) is pure hell and trumps anything Demon Souls ever threw at you. Trust me when I say: It makes Blight Town seem fun in comparison (in fact, I very much enjoyed Dark2's version of Blight Town :p). Generally not at the same level as Demon as it still uses the Dark "Try to put a bonfire right next to the boss" approach, but Dark players may get pissed.

And visually: Some textures look a bit shitty and stretched (particularly the face of the final boss that the game zooms in on...), but all those screenshots you saw saying how horrible it was: They are lies. The game looks a LOT better than Dark1 and there is still a lot of absolutely gorgeous dynamic lighting and warm textures. Some areas got toned down, but the devs did a good job. That being said, I am looking forward to re-buying this on my PS4 so that I can have the prettiness of the PC combined with the hack-free MP

Which brings us to the PvP. Yeah... there are already incredibly optimized PvP builds that will fuck you over. And the mechanics of the game make avoiding PvP a lot harder (you can be invaded for a few deaths after you lose your humanity, and you want to stay close to human a lot of the time for the health boost, since the Cling Ring wastes a slot). In fact, even at probably 15-20 deaths below humanity (long since capped out at 50% health) I regularly get "kidnapped" in certain areas. And it looks like the game punishes people who disconnect, based on certain item descriptions. So yeah.. expect to take your lumps.

Honestly, if the Steam version doesn't have an anti-cheat mechanism of some form I would suggest playing offline or just buying it for a console. It got pretty bad in Dark1 where PvP was (generally) an agreed upon duel. Now? Now invaders pop up VERY frequently and victims have heroes to come to their rescue. So expect hackers on all sides of the PvP landscape which will make a LOT of stuff a LOT harder and less fun. I've been having a lot of fun rolling as a Blue Sentinel (I get summoned in if someone invades somebody) and coming to the rescue of Hosts, but I know that I would be pissed if the Red were unkillable... or if I was a red and the Blue was unkillable.

All in all, I like it a lot. It isn't perfect, but I see no reason to really go back to Dark1. I may go back to Demon eventually, but that is just because I keep forgetting how abusive and poorly designed it was :p. Dark2 is not a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination, but if you liked Dark Souls you will (probably) LOVE this. And if you bounced off Dark Souls you will probably REALLY hate this :p. But be very wary of the PC version as there is a LOT of room for griefers to ruin things for you, and playing a Souls game offline is just depressing. And you miss out on a lot.

Steam: Gundato
PSN: Gundato
If you want me on either service, I suggest PMing me here first to let me know who you are.